In 2003, Chris Moneymaker entered the 2003 World Series of Poker. He’d won a ticket to the event at an online tournament with a buy-in of $650.
At the time, Moneymaker was an unknown. Few people thought the accountant from Spring Hill, Tennessee, could win against legends like Robert Varkonyi, Dan Harrington, and Phil Ivey.
But to the surprise of everyone, Moneymaker took home the $2.5 million grand prize.
It’s considered one of the greatest upsets in gaming history – akin to when Buster Douglas’ epic knockout of Mike Tyson in February 1990.
At the time, “Iron Mike” was the undisputed heavyweight champion. With 33 knockouts under his belt, he entered the match a 42-1 favorite against Douglas.
According to the defunct website Poker Listings, Moneymaker was the first person to win the World Series after qualifying online.
So he was poker’s equivalent to Douglas.
“I was a little underestimated because no one knew who I was,” he said after winning the grand prize. “If I can win it, anybody can.”
After his incredible run, poker mania took off. Everyone wanted to be the next Chris Moneymaker.
His story ignited the “Moneymaker effect.”
Nearly 2 million people watched Moneymaker on TV as he became a millionaire from seemingly nothing overnight. Everyone began to ask themselves, why not me?
The number of entries to the World Series of Poker increased from 839 in 2003 to 8,773 in 2006. And the prize pool jumped from $7.8 million to $82.5 million.
But the mania didn’t just stop there…
Revenue from online poker sites exploded from $300 million in 2003 to $3.3 billion by 2006. That’s a 1,000% increase in just three years.
Here’s why I’m telling you this… We’re about to see a similar Moneymaker effect in crypto.
Crypto Mania Returns
Last month, crypto saw a similar Moneymaker effect.
In fact, one trader who posted on X (formerly Twitter) turned $16,000 into $10.8 million in under two months during the Bonk (BONK) token craze.
Now, if you haven’t heard of BONK, don’t worry. There’s nothing special about the token.
It’s simply another meme coin like DOGE. Most people expected it to go to zero.
But Solana issued BONK as part of its ecosystem. In crypto, major projects like Solana sometimes issue new tokens as an incentive for people to adopt their platforms.
I won’t get into the weeds here, but Solana is a major rival to Ethereum. So it’s a legit blockchain ecosystem… and a favorite of us at Palm Beach Research Group.
However, Solana had ties to the FTX scandal. Again, no need to get into the details here… But the association tarnished Solana. From its peak of $260 in 2021, it crashed to $8.
But since September 2023, Solana has seen a huge resurgence. And it’s up 900% since its low in December 2022.
That crushes the returns of bitcoin and Ethereum, which are up 177% and 116%, respectively, over the same span.
To take advantage of this move, many crypto traders began to bet on BONK becoming the next Dogecoin (more on DOGE below),
This frenzy sent BONK from an $8 million market cap to nearly $1.6 billion in just two months. That’s a 20,000% increase.
The hype surrounding the token was so massive, speculators were buying Solana’s Saga smartphones that came with some BONK tokens for $5,000. Just a few months earlier, the phone retailed for just $600.
The BONK token gained so much attraction and trading volume on decentralized exchanges that Coinbase listed it last month.
It was an instant success.
In its first 24 hours of trading on Coinbase, BONK generated $238 million in trading volume. All for a token worth just $8 million two months ago that no one cared about.
But Coinbase isn’t the only exchange seeing a surge in usage. Last month, Robinhood reported a 75% increase in monthly crypto trading volume.
Now, I’m not telling you this because I think BONK is the next great token to buy.
I’m telling you this because a handful of traders made millions on BONK’s run-up – sparking a Moneymaker effect. And it’s attracting retail investors back into crypto after a brutal bear market.
We saw a similar phenomenon with Dogecoin in 2020.
As you may recall, Dogecoin launched as a joke in 2013. It was never meant to be taken seriously.
But when DOGE became a favorite of tech guru Elon Musk, retail investors took notice.
They latched onto the meme coin. And it became known as “the people’s currency” due to its nominally low price and rabid fan base.
This led to massive inflows from retail investors… and helped fuel the crypto bull run of 2021. In other words, it was another Moneymaker effect.
Over the next five months, crypto markets would add nearly $2 trillion in value as retail money poured into the space.
My point is, you might think a meme coin is stupid and senseless.
But when conditions are perfectly aligned, you can make life-changing gains as money pours into the space from the Moneymaker effect.
And right now, we could be on the cusp of the greatest crypto bull market of all time.
This ETF Craze Will Ignite Another Moneymaker Effect
Last week, the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) approved proposals for 11 spot bitcoin ETFs.
The list includes Bitwise, Grayscale, Hashdex, BlackRock, Valkyrie, BZX, Invesco, VanEck, WisdomTree, Fidelity, and Franklin.
That means by the time you read this, these ETFs will already be trading. Like Daily editor Teeka Tiwari had predicted, the SEC didn’t just approve one spot bitcoin ETF, but 11.
Combined, the 11 firms with bitcoin ETF approval have $17 trillion under management.
Now, the clear and obvious beneficiary to the approval of spot bitcoin ETF is BTC.
According to a Bitwise/VettaFi 2024 Benchmark Survey, 88% of financial advisors interested in purchasing bitcoin are waiting until after a spot bitcoin ETF is approved.
In our view, it’s likely approval of a spot bitcoin ETF would take the BTC price back toward its all-time high near $70,000.
But there’s a niche corner of the crypto Daily editor Teeka Tiwari believes will be next up for their own ETFs. We call them “crypto reward” tokens.
You see, many crypto projects pay out rewards. It’s similar to the way a stock pays a dividend. Instead of receiving cash, though, you receive more of the underlying crypto.
Essentially, you can get paid for backing the disruptive technology that a crypto is developing.
That’s because they offer early adopters the potential for the highest rewards. And we’ve seen this firsthand…
For example, Teeka recommended a crypto payment tokens in September 2019. At the time, it had a reward rate of roughly 7.5% annually.
But the price of this token has grown. And so have the value of the rewards.
Today, the effective reward rate of 42%. At this rate, anyone who followed my initial recommendation would recoup their whole investment in less than three years.
Because of their higher yields, we believe these tokens are the ones Wall Street firms will most likely launch new ETFs for.
Wall Street already has 168 dividend ETFs, with more than $380 billion in assets under management. So we believe it’s going to replicate that with cryptos.
Now, this subsector of the crypto market that accounts for less than 1% of all coins. So for 99.99% of people, this is a brand-new way to invest in cryptos.
So you don’t want to dive into these tokens in without understanding them first…
That’s why Teeka recently held a special briefing on these types of tokens. He believes they’ll help you reach your Freedom Number.
Your Freedom Number is simply the amount of money you need to make to live the life you want.
And because these types of tokens can generate incredible income on top of capital gains – they can help put you on the path to financial freedom.
I’d wager that 99.9% of people have never heard of this tiny niche of cryptos. That’s how tiny this opportunity is now.
But once people see the types of gains you can make from these tokens, the Moneymaker effect will kick in.
If you want a chance to reach your Freedom Number in 2024, you have to focus on this subsector of the crypto market that accounts for less than 1% of all coins.
Look, no one thought Chris Moneymaker would kickstart poker mania. Or that DOGE would run to nearly $90 billion and become one of the biggest winners in crypto history.
Sometimes you just need a spark to ignite a frenzy. And we might’ve seen the start of a similar Moneymaker effect with the spot bitcoin approval last week.
So don’t delay. Make sure to sign up for Teeka’s Freedom 2024 event today. If you wait too long, it could be too late.
Regards,
Houston Molnar
Analyst, Palm Beach Daily